Global Burden of Skin Disease as Reflected in Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
September 2014
in “
JAMA Dermatology
”
TLDR The representation of skin conditions in medical reviews partly matches their real-world impact.
The study from September 1, 2014, evaluated the alignment between the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR) and the global burden of skin diseases as indicated by disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2010 project. It was found that while all 15 skin conditions from the GBD 2010 were represented in the CDSR, there was a mismatch in the number of reviews/protocols to the DALYs for certain conditions. Dermatitis was both highly represented in CDSR and had a high DALY rank. Five skin diseases had a well-matched number of reviews to their DALYs, but three conditions were overrepresented and seven were underrepresented in the CDSR when compared to their DALYs. The study concluded that the representation of skin conditions in the CDSR is only partly correlated with their global burden, suggesting that future research and review topics could be better prioritized to align with the actual disease burden.
